Self-Reliance (Self-Discovery)

In troubled times, one is required to do everything for themselves -- and not rely on anybody else to do it for them.  Most often, those others will simply not be around -- especially if one is on a road less traveled.  If one has ever been in such a situation, one vows to be better prepared the next and all subsequent times -- and not take it for granted that help will arrive -- just because one wants it.  Increasingly, most of life is that way -- and any help and cooperation is always appreciated, but should never be taken for granted, or worse, feel entitled to.

The obvious situations are the earthquakes, fires, floods, plagues, famines, along with innumerable man-made disasters -- often by following sanctioned advice.  But as long as it doesn't work for everybody else, nobody notices that there could be another way -- a better solution, especially when all thought of such is banned and prohibited -- by the powers that wish to exercise that exclusive control.  Such watershed events happen at least once in every lifetime -- whether it is a war, plague, tsunami, personal disaster and loss.  Everyone will experience at least once in their life -- and those who haven't, still have that to learn, and benefit from.

So it is much better to have won and lost a fortune, than only known winning -- with never a loss, because that loss teaches one something even more valuable than never having loss -- yet.  Because one day it does come, and one is totally unprepared for it -- which is always a greater calamity than those who have been there before.  That is one of the advantages of age -- and having lived a long enough life to have experienced many things -- and have died and been reborn to survive anew.

The caveat of course, is that one survives to learn from that lesson -- and also learns not to tempt fate unnecessarily.  Every mistake and overestimation of one's abilities, could be one's last.  And that is not foolish, for those who survive to 100.  They've demonstrated what it takes to get there.  But just crawling over the finish line after everybody else has gone home, is not enough -- to make one "first."  One wants to discover something else in which they can really be first -- and not the last, and receiving a "Participation" trophy for still thinking it matters.

Better they should create their own event -- in which they really do come in first -- such as the first to live to 100, and not look 100.  That is yet to be achieved -- but surely, that milestone will be breached -- as has to, for living even longer, to have much meaning at all.  So those who merely they can live forever on artificial life support, obviously haven't thought the implications of life at all.  Even if one has all the money in the world to afford, does one want to end up a pile of unrecognizable protoplasm in some laboratory-sealed bunker -- far from the river of life?

I don't think so -- but there may be a billionaire or two looking forward to such a precedence.  Much things are possible these days -- but why not the truly amazing, and unthinkable?  That would obviously be for a person to live a hundred years while still getting better -- not as a lie not to hurt their feelings, but actually so, because they actually do all the right things -- and not simply the "right" things that don't work.  That could be true for diet, exercise, lifestyle -- if it doesn't actually work -- but instead, multiplies the many incurable contemporary diseases and afflictions of these times.

A few perceptive researchers and thinkers about life have questioned that maybe everything they thought was true, is not -- as the simple and obvious explanation for why their models and theories do not work -- rather than insisting that they must be true -- despite the results and consequences.  That has been the experience of human consciousness and thought for as long as there is a record of thoughts -- and how individuals, cultures and societies, have attempted to circumvent it -- as the cult of "immortality" in every civilization -- that forms the basis for most religions.

It is the "greater life" in some vague manner that resonates in every culture.  But how that is to be manifested "in the flesh," remains to be seen.  That is what we really want to know -- as the fountain of youth, or the holy grail -- which is that eternal quest for the unknown beyond.  The "known" has its obvious limitations -- that does not get us there -- obviously.  Thus, one has very little to lose going where everybody else has gone before -- even if it is the conventional wisdom that fails everybody else.  We don't need further proof of that. 

The answer must lie beyond this known.  It is the unthinkable.  But only time will tell -- as the first who get there, and share that accomplishment in the unprecedented manner not possible before.  One YouTube video claimed to be a 100 year old ballerina -- which would have been impressive if that were true -- but alas, she turned out to be only 78 -- a remarkable achievement in itself -- and opening up the possibility that it will be achievable in her own lifetime.  However, ballet is a perilous vehicle for achieving and exhibiting that -- and any fall from that grace, might put an end to further progress.

So it would be appropriate to ask, how would one demonstrate the robustness and viability of life at that age and condition?  Does one necessarily have to run a marathon -- that actually eliminates the field rather than increases the access -- by anybody still living and breathing.  That's really not hard to conceive -- if one can let go of all the requirements of all those activities that aren't working, and in most cases, eliminate the participation.  You don't get there by eliminating the field of participants.

And that is what the competitive model of athletics and activities deliberately seek to do -- eliminate all the others until only the one remains.  But is that necessarily what one wants to do?  You can always isolate the one who will be the rare exception -- but if one wishes to discover a general principle, that is the last thing one would do.  You don't want to know what only works for one -- no matter how exceptional.  You wish to find out what works for most -- so many get there, and then you see the possibilities -- of life beyond.

A sedentary life, or even a bedridden one, should not be a limitation.  If one prefers to sit, one need not be forced to stand, nor the bedridden to walk -- when doing so only increases their risk of further danger and injury.  Even then, that does not preclude any and all movement -- particularly of what is most significant to move, and that is the blood -- not primarily dependent on the constant heart action -- but greatly impacted by the engagement of those muscles seldom mobilized.  If fact, many think they are immobile -- when they are still capable of the greatest movements possible, which are at muscles of expression.  They are also the areas greatest distance from the heart -- at the head, hands and feet -- which articulating, and increasing their health and functioning particularly, is mostly the movements that matters.

If those fine-motor movements and expressions can be maintained -- and even enhanced, then one is still improving, and growing.  There is no greater self-evident truth.